Fraudsters make a hit on DBS Bank again

The Singapore bank has repaid 17 customers after they complained of unauthorised withdrawals from their accounts.

It happened a month ago and it has happened again with some DBS Bank customers in Singapore.

Today, Singapore media is awash with stories that the bank has been hit by another round of skimming on Sunday (19 Feb), this time from ATM machines here. A total of S$23,000 was stolen from the bank accounts of 17 customers.

The bank had suffered a similar attack, albeit on a much larger scale in early January. Between 5 and 6 January, about S$1 million was stolen from the accounts of 700 DBS and POSB customers. It has been described as Singapore's largest ATM card skimming fraud. The ATM withdrawals were made from Malaysia.

DBS said in a statement yesterday that "on 19 February, Sunday night, DBS received calls from a handful of customers who were alerted to unauthorised ATM withdrawals in Singapore, after receiving real-time SMS alerts from the bank".

"This incident is not a result of any new skimming activity but a residual effect of the same card skimming operation that took place at the end of last year," the bank added. "DBS fully compensated all 17 affected customers a total of S$23,000 within 24 hours."

The bank said that it is working closely with the authorities on the investigation and confirmed that over the past few days, there have been no unauthorised withdrawals made in Singapore.

Based on the Sunday withdrawals, the banks said its analytics team identified a further group of customers who were potentially at risk of fraudulent domestic withdrawals. "To safeguard them against unauthorised ATM withdrawals, the bank proactively de-activated the cards of this group of customers, and took immediate steps to replace their cards," it said.

These customers were also informed of the card de-activation on the same day and new ATM/Debit cards have since been issued to them, the bank said.